Val Swain and Emily Apple - Shocking police footage

The Guardian has shocking footage here of two protesters being manhandled for what appears to be no good reason during the Kingsnorth protests last year. Here is the footage from Youtube:

Val Swain and Emily Apple were apparently arrested for trying to identify the officers involved. What seems to spark it off is when they try to photograph an officer who has refused to identify himself. They are grabbed and bundled to the floor. Pressure is applied to their necks and Emily has her foot stood on, is bound and thrown into the back of a van.

They were then held for 4 days after which they were released without charge. By then the protests were over.

Now I have written about this sort of thing before. The Ian Tomlinson case where a man died some time after being pushed by a police officer during the G20 protests sparked a great deal of public concern and anger. I said not long after that that the use of new technology would eventually force the police to change.

Now the events shown here took place last year before the repercussions of the Ian Tomlinson case had been felt but I think it is a prime example of what the public is concerned about. It certainly shows that the sort of things we saw at the G20 were not isolated incidents or indeed confined to the capital (Kingsnorth is in Kent and the police officer who refused to identify himself was apparently from West Yorkshire according to the footage). There are distinct parallels with the sort of things we saw at the G20 protests, refusal of officers to identify themselves, disproportionate force seeming to be used when it seems unwarranted etc. I hope this footage gets wider coverage and other abuses like this come out into the open.

Emily and Val are members of Fit Watch, an organisation which aims to film and record police officers as they record the public at things like demonstrations. This is exactly the sort of thing the public should be doing and as long as the police are acting correctly then there should be no problem with people doing this.

As I said before, the technology will eventually force the police culture to change. This is another example that will hopefully contribute to this.

UPDATE1: Updated to include the Youtube footage. Hattip to Fausty for this.

UPDATE2: Emily Apple has written a piece for Comment is Free about this incident.

UPDATE3: The original Youtube footage I embedded has been removed so I have replaced it with another version which is the same footage (I think, from memory).